About the Play:
The play Mudra
Rakshasam, written by a playwrite in Sanskrit deals with how Chanakya secures the
services of the Rakshasa, the erstwhile prime minister of Nandas, for Chandragupta. Rakshasa was a person of great ability,
integrity and loyalty. He is loyal to Nandas,
but Chanakya thinks that the qualities and abilities of Rakshasa were needed in
the new kingdom. Chanakya feels that he has
already played his role, and that continued the running of the kingdom is
better entrusted to Rakshasa. But how to
get rakshasa to come willingly to Chandragupta is the problem facing
Chanakya. So he devises, an enormously
subtle and clever plot to get Rakshasa to commit himself willingly to become the
prime minister, for, Chanakya knows that once Rakshasa commits willingly, he
would serve loyally, being a person of great integrity.
About the Author:
The author of the play
Mudra Rakshasam is Visakha Datta. It is
believed that his period was 4th century A.D. He is known by the name Visakha Deva
also. He was the son of King Bhaskara
Datt and the grand-son of Vatesvara Datta.
Of his works, his prominent play Mudra Rakshasam only has been found
till now.
Information about Chanakya the great King maker:
Chanakya, the son of
Chanaka – this name itself highly remarkable.
His actual name was VishnuGupta, perhaps due to his intigues, he was
also called Kautilya. Being an
intellectual leader, Chanakya was truly a phenomenon. He managed to get support and commitment of
numerous kings in North India, but he needed the support of the largest and the
most powerful kingdom of North India at the time, namely, Magadha - the present
day Bihar. The kingdom was ruled by a
line of arrogant despots, namely, the Nandas, thoroughly drunk in their own
power. They not only were unimpressed by
Chanakyas’s arguments, but in fact, insulted him and threw him physically out
of the palace. Partly to wreak vengeance for his insult, and partly due to the realization
that without overthrowing the Nandas, his mission could not be carried out, he
swore to depose the Nandas.
He found a village boy,
playing a game of “King and Subjects,” according to a legend, who he felt would
be able to make a great kingby virtue of intelligence, shrewdness, and a sense
of values. Chanakya became the mentor
and teacher of this star pupil, who did indeed became the instrument to carry
out the schemes of Chanakya. His name
was ChandraGupta Maurya, the founder of the Maurya Dynasty whose most famous
ruler was Asoka the Great.
ChandraGupta, with
strategic advice from Chanakya, went on to defeat the Nandas, every one of whom
Chanakya liquidated. ChandraGupta, with
Chanakya as his prime minister, went on establish the first true empire of
India, bringing virtually the entire North India and parts of South India under
his control, and threw out the Greeks.
Chanakya, it is believed, having achieved his mission of unification and
driving out the Greeks, forsook his ministerial position, left the kingdom, and
returned to his teaching. (ChandraGupta
himself reigned from 322 to 298 B.C. He
abdicated his thrown, crowned his son, Bindusara as the Emperor, embraced
Jainoism, and left the kingdom, wandering as a Jain monk.)
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